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Progressive Government: The New Center The man can give a speech. Confident, relaxed, bold, serious, President Obama made his case to the American people with boffo reviews from all who saw it no matter what their party allegiance. And his case was a clear and bold statement of the need for progressive government as the vital instrument to move us out of this crisis and into the future. The recovery plan to put people back to work. Banking reform and “new rules of the road” to get banks working once more. The mortgage initiative to help homeowners stay in their homes. But more, the need for sustained public investment and leadership to move us into the future with new energy, reform of our broken health care system, and provision of a world class education from birth to a career for every child.

GOP Keeps Avoiding Its Fiscal ‘Principles’ How big should government be? The answer is: As big as it has to be — and for small-government types, no bigger than it has to be. The whole debate about the proper size of government is a blind alley leading into a dead end. Government must grow at times of war or collapsing economy. It grows when there are lots of schoolchildren, elderly people or natural disasters. Government provides necessities that the private sector can’t. We can argue over what constitutes a necessity.

Foggo Claimed Credit For Getting Mistress’s Boss Fired In addition to his penchant for road rage, Dusty Foggo certainly seems to have known how to treat a lady. The sentencing memo tells how, after Foggo moved from overseas to the CIA’s headquarters — leaving his wife and family…

Quick Morning After Thoughts On Obama’s Speech 1 – These thing are always a Rorschach test, but in our household Obama was king of the world last night. In fact, my wife Jody (as usual) had the best quick take when he was done. “After he does…

Obama: Responsible Capitalism vs. Crony Capitalism President Barack Obama’s speech Tuesday night was laced with phrases and ideas that emphasized his view that government has a responsibility not only to foster a strong economy, but also to insure that ordinary people benefit from that economy. He…

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Stepping up in Jindal’s defense yesterday, Rush Limbaugh warned his fellow conservatives yesterday not to say negative things about Jindal. “Those of you who think Jindal was horrible….I don’t ever want to hear from you ever again,” he said.

One Republican who isn’t heeding Limbaugh’s warnings is the anti-immigrant zealot and former congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO). In an interview with ThinkProgress at the CPAC conference today, Tancredo declared that Jindal’s speech marks the end of his presidential ambitions:

TP: [Jindal] has gotten some flack for his performance on the response to Obama. I’m curious what your thoughts on it was.

TANCREDO: Great content. Lousy delivery. And I’m sorry to say this because I like him a lot. I served with him. Good guy. Solid guy. But I think that performance would very well have put the last nail in the coffin for him, for running for president. Mostly because what we are desperately looking for today in this party is a leader. Bobby Jindal is a great intellect, but his capacity to lead just is, his bearing, is not there. At least, it wasn’t there.

Watch it:

“I’m not saying he can’t overcome it, but I’m telling you it’s a major obstacle now. And I’m sorry about that,” Tancredo said. “In this business, often times you need more sizzle than steak.”

SLIWA: Because he is — when guys look at him and young women look at him — they say oh, that’s the slumdog millionaire, governor. So, give me some slum love.

STEELE: I love it. (inaudible) … some slum love out to my buddy. Gov. Bobby Jindal is doing a friggin’ awesome job in his state. He’s really turned around on some core principles — like hey, government ought not be corrupt. The good stuff … the easy stuff.

In the budget released today, the Obama administration announced that it would end the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans, as well as shut off loopholes that effectively eviscerate corporate tax revenues, all in an effort to fuel a robust domestic agenda and start lowering the deficit.

Predictably, the right wing is up in arms over the small tax increase for the richest businesses and families. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) complained to a friendly crowd at CNBC this morning that Obama’s tax increases would harm the economy, and insisted the best way to raise revenue is to cut taxes:

HUTCHISON: I think we get revenue the way we’ve done it in the past that has been so successful in the past and that is tax cuts…Every major tax cut we’ve had in history has created more revenue.

Watch it:

The notion that cutting taxes somehow — magically — increases government revenues is a myth that won’t die. “The claim that tax cuts pay for themselves…is contradicted by the historical record,” reported the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which showed that revenues grew twice as fast in the 1990s, when taxes were raised, than in the 1980s, when taxes were cut. FactCheck.org called a claim like Hutchison’s “highly misleading” and stated the obvious fact that “we can’t have both lower taxes and fatter government coffers.”

“[E]verything you’ve heard about how revenues have boomed since the Bush tax cuts is wrong,” economist Paul Krugman wrote, noting that government revenues climbed steadily through the Clinton administration, then plunged dramatically following the 2001 Bush tax cuts. And falling revenues during tax-cutting Republican administrations means growing debt:

Hutchison must be looking at a different “history” than everybody else.

Senate Panel to Examine CIA Detainee Handling The Senate intelligence committee is planning an unprecedented review of the CIA’s handling of captured terrorist suspects, drawing back the curtain for the first time on the agency’s use of waterboarding and other interrogation tactics inside secret CIA prisons, congressional sources said…

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Anyone who’s ever worn a headset while on Xbox Live, Microsoft’s multiplayer gaming-chatting-shopping nexus, knows that it’s dominated by adolescent bigots. It’s bad enough that Redmond hasn’t cleaned things up, but a gamer named Teresa says she was actually banned from the service for being openly gay and allegedly offending the bigots who were harassing her.

Apparently, this sort of thing has happened before. Kotaku reports that Microsoft defends its actions by saying it objects to all content of a sexual nature, but there’s a big difference between sex and sexual identity—isn’t that obvious?—especially on a service that encourages users to dish about themselves, be it through their profiles, status messages or avatars.

Kotaku:

(Former) Xbox Live gamer Teresa found herself on the receiving end of a ban from the service for a surprising reason. She identified herself as a lesbian in her Live profile.

That resulted in a ban from the service after her Xbox Live peers complained about her profile, according to a letter to the Consumerist.

It’s not like we haven’t heard this before. Microsoft has issued bans to players in the past for expressing their sexual preferences in Gamertags, but this is the first we’ve heard of profile info at the root cause of being kicked off Live.

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Where's Osama?

On Sept. 11th, 2001 George Bush said he would catch bin Laden dead or alive.
He never did, we used to run a counter showing how many days it had been, but Obama finally took care of it for him. Just another Bush lie.

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The Hollywood Liberal started in 2004 at the height of the Bush Administration madness in America.
We were inspired by the late great Bartcop.com. The very first thing I did when the site started was to get arrested at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. My arrest at the start of a march from The World Trade Center was later ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge. On New Years Eve 2014 the case was finally settled, with a judge awarding a class action suit that I was part of over $26 Million. I posted daily on the blog up until the end of The Bush error, and the site is now run as a history of the whole fiasco. Feel free to browse the old postings, pictures, & comics (an HL favorite) It reveals the twisted history of the times. Thanks H.L.